Starter · Level 1 of 3
Apple Shortcuts is a free automation app built into every iPhone, iPad, and Mac released in the last several years, and most people never open it. A shortcut is a one-tap button that runs a short sequence of actions for you — send a text, silence your phone, resize a photo, log an expense — without opening three different apps to do it by hand. Nothing below requires writing code. Below are ten shortcuts built around real everyday annoyances, plus a full walkthrough of building your first one from scratch.
What You Need Before You Start
Shortcuts comes preinstalled on any iPhone or iPad running iOS 13 or later, and on any Mac running macOS Monterey or later. If it is not on your Home Screen, search for it — it is there, it just gets buried. On older Macs, it is a free download from the Mac App Store. You do not need a paid Apple subscription, a developer account, or any third-party app to follow this guide. Everything here uses the Shortcuts app alone.
One thing worth knowing going in: a shortcut is not the same as an Automation. A shortcut is a button you tap (or ask Siri to run). An Automation is a shortcut that fires on its own — when you arrive home, when you connect to CarPlay, at a set time. The Automations tab lives inside the Shortcuts app and is covered near the end of this guide, but every example below starts as a plain, tappable shortcut first.
How Do You Build Your First Shortcut?
The fastest way to understand Shortcuts is to build one, so start with a shortcut that solves a specific annoyance: sending your ETA to someone without typing it out while you are driving or walking.
- Open the Shortcuts app and tap the + in the top right to start a new shortcut.
- Tap Add Action and search for Get Current Location. Add it — this pulls your live location into the shortcut.
- Search for Get Travel Time and add it. Set the destination to a saved address, like Home or Work, from the dropdown.
- Search for Send Message and add it. In the message field, tap the blue variable icon and insert the travel time output from the previous step, then type around it: “Running about ” then the variable, then ” minutes late, on my way.”
- Tap the recipient field in the Send Message action and choose the contact you text most often when you are running behind.
- Tap the shortcut’s name at the top (it defaults to “New Shortcut”) and rename it something like “Send My ETA.”
- Tap the settings icon (looks like three dots in a circle), then Add to Home Screen, so it becomes a one-tap icon instead of something buried in the app.
That is a complete, working shortcut: one tap pulls your location, calculates travel time to a saved address, drops it into a pre-written message, and sends it to a specific person. Nothing about it required code — only choosing actions from a search box and connecting their outputs to each other.
10 One-Tap Shortcuts Worth Setting Up
Each of these follows the same pattern as the walkthrough above: a handful of built-in actions, chained together, triggered by one tap, a Siri phrase, or a Back Tap gesture. None require a subscription or a third-party account.
- Send My ETA. The shortcut built above — live location plus travel time, sent as a pre-written text to one contact.
- Silence and Auto-Reply. Chain Set Focus (Do Not Disturb, on) with Send Message to a saved contact reading “In a meeting, will call back after.” One tap before you walk into a room.
- Log an Expense by Voice. Chain Dictate Text with Add New Note (or Append to Note, if you keep a running list). Say the amount and what it was for; it lands in a note you already check at tax time.
- Share Wi-Fi as a QR Code. Chain Ask for Input (network name and password) with Generate QR Code. Guests scan it with their phone camera instead of you spelling out a password.
- Batch-Resize Photos for Upload. Chain Select Photos with Resize Image (set a max width, like 1600px) and Save to Photo Album. Useful before uploading a batch to a site with size limits.
- Leaving Now. Chain Send Message (“Leaving now, see you in”) with Get Travel Time to a saved address, then Open App (Maps) with directions already set. One tap covers the text and the navigation.
- Screenshot to Filed PDF. Chain Get Latest Screenshots with Make PDF and Save File to a specific Files folder. Clears the screenshot pile in your camera roll into something searchable.
- Voice Memo to Text Note. Chain Dictate Text with Add New Note, titled with the current date via the Current Date action. Good for a thought you want in text later, not just recorded audio.
- Add to Grocery List by Voice. Chain Dictate Text with Add to List (a Reminders list named “Groceries”). Say the item while your hands are full; it is on the list when you get to the store.
- One-Tap Do Not Disturb While Driving Off-Switch. Chain Set Focus (off) with Open App (whichever app you check first — Messages or a work app). Turns driving mode off and opens what you need in one motion instead of two.
| Shortcut | Best Trigger | What It Replaces |
|---|---|---|
| Send My ETA | Home Screen icon | Typing a text while walking or at a red light |
| Silence and Auto-Reply | Back Tap | Manually switching Focus, then texting separately |
| Log an Expense by Voice | Siri phrase | Opening a spreadsheet app to type one line |
| Share Wi-Fi as a QR Code | Home Screen icon | Spelling out a password out loud |
| Batch-Resize Photos | Share Sheet | Resizing photos one at a time before uploading |
| Leaving Now | Home Screen icon | Texting, then separately opening Maps |
| Screenshot to Filed PDF | Home Screen icon | Screenshots piling up unsorted in Photos |
| Voice Memo to Text Note | Siri phrase | Re-listening to a memo later to find one detail |
| Add to Grocery List by Voice | Siri phrase | Opening Reminders and typing with full hands |
| DND-Off Switch | Back Tap | Two separate taps to turn off Focus and open an app |
How Do You Trigger a Shortcut Without Opening the App?
A shortcut is only as useful as how fast you can fire it, and Shortcuts gives you five ways that do not involve opening the app first:
- Home Screen icon. Covered in the walkthrough above — the shortcut sits on your Home Screen like any other app.
- Siri phrase. In the shortcut’s settings, add a custom phrase, then say “Hey Siri, [phrase]” to run it hands-free.
- Back Tap (iPhone 8 and later). Under Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap, assign a shortcut to a double or triple tap on the back of the phone — no unlocking required first.
- Share Sheet. Some shortcuts, like the photo resizer, can run directly from the share menu in Photos, so you never leave the app you started in.
- Automations tab. This is where a shortcut stops needing a tap at all. An Automation can run a shortcut when you arrive at a location, connect to a specific Wi-Fi network, or at a set time of day — useful once you have a shortcut you always want to run under the same condition, like silencing your phone every time you connect to your car.
Start with a Home Screen icon or a Siri phrase for anything new. Move it to an Automation only once you have used it enough times to know it should run without you thinking about it at all.
What Happens the First Time You Run a New Shortcut?
The first time a shortcut uses your location, contacts, or photos, iOS shows a permission prompt — the same kind you see the first time any app asks for that access. Approve it once and the shortcut runs without asking again, unless you later revoke the permission under Settings > Privacy & Security. If a shortcut suddenly stops working after an iOS update, that permission screen is the first place to check; Apple occasionally resets automation permissions during major updates as a security measure, not because the shortcut itself broke.
A shortcut can also fail quietly if one of its actions depends on something that changed — a saved address got deleted from Contacts, or a Files folder got renamed. When that happens, open the shortcut in edit mode; the action with the problem is usually flagged with a small warning icon, and tapping it shows what needs to be reselected. This is a five-second fix, not a rebuild.
Can You Share a Shortcut You Built?
Yes, and it does not require rebuilding it for someone else. From the Shortcuts app, tap the three-dot menu on any shortcut, then Share, and choose either a direct file (AirDrop or Messages, for someone on the same Apple ecosystem) or a shareable iCloud link (works for anyone, even without opening the app first — they get a preview of every action before installing it). This is worth knowing before building all ten shortcuts here from scratch: if someone else in the household already built the Wi-Fi QR code one, ask for the link instead of starting over.
One caution worth passing along: never install a shared shortcut from a source you do not recognize without reviewing its actions first. The same preview screen that shows you what a shortcut does before installing it exists specifically so you are not running an unknown sequence of actions sight unseen — get in the habit of scrolling through it.
Where This Fits Into a Bigger System
Shortcuts is a good starting point precisely because it costs nothing and lives on a device you already carry, but it has a ceiling — it cannot connect to most web apps or run on a schedule with the reliability of a dedicated tool. Once you outgrow what a phone-based shortcut can do, the next step up is a no-code automation platform; the roundup of workflow automations that save solopreneurs real time covers what that looks like once you are ready to connect apps beyond your phone. And if the goal is stacking a handful of these into a single daily routine rather than ten separate one-taps, building a morning routine that runs itself shows how to chain automations like these into one sequence instead of running them individually.
Ten shortcuts is a reasonable starting set, not a target to hit all at once. Build the ETA one first, since it takes five minutes and the payoff is immediate, then add one more each time you notice yourself doing the same two-app, three-tap task for the third time in a week.
Keep going: Browse more quick beginner automations, or connect your shortcuts to broader life and time systems.
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